Ooh, another bloated, ad-riddled, telemetry tracker linked to a specific hardware profile that you have to pay a license fee to install. That versus a relatively universal SteamOS for FREE.

An Xbox branded gaming handheld is still a closed ecosystem. By comparison, the Steam Deck is not.

Somehow, I just can't see M$ having the vision or the ability anymore to make overcoming the Steam Deck a success.

-------

I still believe that, at some point in the future, M$ is going to abandon the Windows O/S and just start producing a proprietary Windows desktop environment on top of a Linux base.

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@CatKiller

the biggest flaw of the Deck has always been that people that want one can't get one.

To borrow from Gabe himself:

"It's a service supply issue"

:grin:

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I understand that Kepler support in NVK is going to be a while. Is there a timeline for the Maxwell chipset?

Edit: Oops. I actually meant to ask about the Pascal chipset but knowing the timeline for Maxwell would be great too.

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Bag of Holding is a new game development studio founded by Roll20 co-creator Riley Dutton, focused on "creating sustainable games for passionate communitie"s.

What exactly is a sustainable game? Are they just throwing buzzwords around?

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@rivalary

Let's see. In addition to Heroic Games Launcher and Lutris, there is also the Minigalaxy GOG client. Read here:

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/02/simple-gog-client-for-linux-minigalaxy-v1-3-2-released-with-improved-game-installs/

The community has provided what GOG has not. Why does the client have to be official? Frankly, I think the community solutions do a better job than the official ones.

Personally, I favour GOG because they give me the ability to download offline installers. I like being able to keep a personal archive of my game installers. I also like not having to depend on the Steam client (or GOG Galaxy, for that matter) in order to install my games.

It's not one or the other, you know. I do still buy games on Steam. Sometimes, Steam will have a native Linux version that isn't available on GOG. I just tend to favour GOG if the game is available on both platforms. Like @Shmerl, I also want to show my support for DRM-free gaming.

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@bepop

Why not put high quality assets as a free DLC. People can choose to download it if they can take advantage and skip it if not.

I really like this idea (and how @BladePupper expanded on it). Didn't CDPR do something like that not that long ago with The Witcher III?

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If I can get the game DRM free at a reasonable price, I'm not going to pirate it -- even if the cracked, pirated copy is readily available. Piracy has been demonstrated to be a non-issue by GOG, itch.io and many of the indie developers.

The piracy paranoia that many publishers suffer from is a trust issue. Trust is the basis of a good business relationship. IMO, by telling consumers you don't trust them, you're just encouraging a bad relationship -- thus, piracy.

It has been said before, that most people who pirate were never going to buy that game/book/music anyway. Imposing DRM is just wasting a lot of time, energy and money on people that will never be their customers under any circumstances. By punishing their trustworthy customers, they're just increasing the chances of losing even more sales. It's unfortunate that some publishers cannot comprehend that.

"Piracy is a service issue."

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I, for one, get no nostalgia from seeing this name. I will forever remember Acclaim as the despicable company that ran one of the best comic book companies into the ground and then raped and pillaged their assets, before collapsing into much deserved bankruptcy themselves. The name holds no cache for me.

:angry:

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I'm sure that many of you hardcore gamers might disagree, but I don't understand this drive by developers to continuously force hardware upgrades on prospective customers anymore. It's going to start costing them customers.

Frankly, I've played AC2 and watched videos for Black Flag and Syndicate on "retro" hardware. I find the graphics in AC2 to be amazing. The same for the videos of the other two.

I honestly don't see any need to improve the graphics further. In terms of resolution, I've always felt that 720p/800p was good enough. Even though I have a 1080p screen, I usually set my resolution down to 720p anyway -- just to gain better game performance. IMO, developers should focus on story quality and a better gameplay experience instead.

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This is really good news! Installing GOverlay in Ubuntu looked like too much work, so I never bothered. I'll have to give this new AppImage a try ...

Edit [Mar07]: Sadly, no such luck. The AppImage didn't even launch. AppImagelauncher detected it, then ... nothing. I'll have to see if I can launch it via terminal to get a activity log.

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